In order to provide secure messaging services (SMS) over the Internet between a sender and a receiver, public key encryption is commonly used to achieve the required security to exchange private and sensitive data. The secure communications provided by public key encryption can be applied to a variety of electronic transactions including, but not limited to, email, electronic commerce, and electronic funds transfers. A public key infrastructure (PKI) is required to facilitate public key encryption based communications to support verification and authentication of the validity of each party involved in a public key encryption based transaction. Traditionally, a PKI is not linked in an automated manner to systems and applications, such as corporate email systems and email address list directory, which support email communications between a sender and a receiver.
Therefore, a need exists for a method and apparatus for providing a Secure Messaging Service (SMS) certificate registration process in a packet network, e.g., an IP network.